


sweet creature

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 05:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19761100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: togami remembers the first time he’d seen naegi cry.





	sweet creature

togami remembers the first time he’d seen naegi cry.

it’d made him sick, then- not the rotting body before them, no, but the way he’d steered himself around those murders and trials and murders and trials, tears shed for every last heart stopped. even to watch a culprit face their retribution, naegi would cry for them, for the loss of innocence he’d hold his chest and weep. and togami kept his hair clipped to a neat length the whole while, and he’d dressed sharply and spoke smartly, and for no reason but the broad shouldered machine of himself had he survived it. 

he’d watched naegi sob on his knees on that filthy carpet for the first and third or so deaths and deaths and deaths, fading later on to curt clenches of his teeth where a pitied nose would scrape out, expression taut with ire as his eyes watered from the brims. it wasn’t just the crying that togami remembers, either. he thinks sometimes about that same fierce anger quivering his either fist, the way naegi would shed away every reputation he’d had to lash out at any idiocy spat up during investigative ensembles. naegi since his very first breath could be upended by a quick breeze, either literal or in the way a pretty girl’s lashes batted, yet he would not crumble beneath pressure’s heel. togami had made sure of it, tested his hypothesis over and over again once he’d first thought, well huh, maybe that messy looking one’s not so tragic afterall.

naegi was is and will be a fighter. togami sees it in every bout of determination overtaking his sweet face, in every lazy smile in the gnawing dark, in every tear shed the first time togami sees him cry for the second time. because it hadn’t been gore or hysteria that’d choked him blue that time, not at all trapped in those red rimmed halls, wood grain podium lips still fresh beneath the fingertips. and neither was it one of the times he’d been thrust awake in a dead night middle for the recollection of it he gasps to rid himself of, which happens now and then for the both of them, for all six who’d come out of it scathed only through the emotions. when naegi drowns in his nightmares, he does not ever cry, not that togami has ever paid close enough attention to to notice as his chest is lain upon and arms filled in those begging themselves not to tremble. the first second time togami had seen naegi cry had been in his own home, the deliciously gilded apartment housing all to himself, something renovated to replace their stuffy bunkers at the future foundation base. in his home that was only beginning to feel that way because naegi would come by from time to time and leave behind a jacket or glove or coffee ring on a coaster or smell on a couch pillow. sometimes kirigiri came, too, but togami didn’t care if the armchair was left in disarray after she’d sat in it the last hour. 

the first second time togami had seen naegi cry- though, likely, it’d been the first hundredth time, for how frequently it came about in their time at hope’s lovely peak, as he’s mentioned, yes yes, catch up with it. the next first time togami had seen naegi cry had been in his home, new to him for the last year or so now, which would make him, and he remembers it, twenty one years old to the very day. when he’d seen naegi cry, it had been on his birthday, in his home, late in the evening after work hours ended to the vermilion scape of the horizon. two cars fill the lot outside, because they hadn’t the faintest thought of letting recent news be broadcast to anyone else without first knowing what to call it themselves; togami knew at that time that they were perhaps as close as two friends could be, after all they’d been through and all naegi had shoved care into his life, so he knew kissing naegi wasn’t as strange as it would have been several months ago or several vodka shots ago. something like that, it’d gone something like that, with the pair of them spending a minute together in togami’s living room that’d run on hours, and they’d drank and laughed too loudly and, yes, they’d kissed, and yes naegi’s mouth had tasted of unfiltered ecstasy that gripped togami by the jawline and reminded him what it felt to be a living breathing man. so they’d kissed and spent a few nights together, some of them sultry and some of them not, and it’d gone on for perhaps a close month yet felt nothing short of all the years they’d known each other by the time togami’s twenty first birthday became a reality. may fifth of the new year. that’d been another night naegi had gone home with him, holding him at the wrists and kissing him braindead without his shoes even yet discarded.

and then he’d cried. but togami’s certain some pieces are missing to the story there, like the fifteen good solid minutes they’d argued each other back forth back over the simple suggestion of celebrating the occasion. naegi had propsed dinner or something or other at a nice place that’d been built recently. togami had scoffed in his face and said birthdays are meaningless, nothing he was allowed to indulge in in childhood and nothing worth it now. so they’d argued, and togami recalled then his first theory that naegi can for certain be a firework of fight when he chooses to be, and he himself perhaps a touch stubborn if he’d felt such a need to snap at the zenith of debate, insisting for a final time his insistence, and that’s the first second third fourth time togami had seen naegi cry, the first time he’d been the reason. 

“you’re- you’re just so _difficult_ sometimes,” he still hears in his head to this moment now. the way, too, that naegi had stood there with his cheekbones snarling darker and darker a heat with the seconds, all the way to grasping palms over the gushing eyes as he slid his back down the wall to sit against it. “i don’t even care about it anymore. winning an argument shouldn’t be m- more important than...than hurting me.”

they fought like that not often, but on enough occasions for togami to dare call himself scarred. self inflicted wounds, no less. he’d been twenty one the first time he’d felt the bearings tilt beneath his feet, just _slightly,_ just enough to make him wonder what the hell he’s like that for. 

they fought, and they rectified it, and they fought, and they didn’t, just once, one single time when naegi had known nothing but an echo behind him as the front door spit him out onto the curb to take the night roads home again. nothing had stabbed togami so deeply to sword’s hilt than calling him an ex. 

then they’d fixed it. together. long before they’d ever tempted the idea of romance, their partnership had been marveled at, the perfect balance to work off each other in branch fourteen field missions, a combination incomparable to any other. perhaps naegi had taught togami some acrid spoonful of teamwork along those years. but he’d never go as efficiently with kirigiri. goddamn that woman. she’d been a fine maid of honor, though.

togami remembers the first time naegi had cried in his home and the first time he’d stepped into it, too, and the very first time he’d realized he hadn’t bought the little potted fern on the living room table, nor arranged the shampoos on the shower shelves in such a disastrous array, and around that time had been when he’d noticed, hey, come to think of it, naegi hasn’t spent a night at his own place in a long damn fucking while. 

togami remembers the first time naegi had made him breakfast, and that’s just exactly when he knew it was all over.

then he’d bought naegi a record player for one christmas after he’d mentioned wanting one the prior june. then they’d got a cat that they most certainly weren’t keeping. then they’d lived a hundred more nights together, a wide handful of which would gather them up on the sofa after a grueling office shift, limbs tangled and suits half undone, falling droopy eyed to the tune of a bad tv movie and last night’s leftovers. sometime in the middle of it all is when togami had fallen in love. 

on surreptitious occasion, he will be awake too late for morning alarm’s good, hardly able to decipher the shape of his hands as the time has thieved both light and lenses. but he knows they’re there just the same, and he knows the little weightless breaths beside him are there, ones he watches shift naegi’s chest in slow, threading thrums. he watches naegi sleep beside him, in his bed, in his home, something that’s all become theirs in time to that care shoved into his life scraping raw the harshest patterns to lay light upon vulnerability. no matter the tight clench it could leave to his jaw...togami can see his hands and he can see his makoto, so he’ll finish that thought another day. another day another time another life where his fingertips do not trace the softest outlines of naegi’s arms, his wrists and his palms and the warmth they know. but he wouldn’t like to be the man who must endure such a moment. 

endlessly, he watches naegi sleep there beside him, and remembers the first time he’d been certain this would be his forever.

endlessly.


End file.
